Monday Night Class w/Suzin Green

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Month: January 2014

I woke up Monday morning hearing the words “warming the stone child…” I remembered this is a title from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ canon although did not recall the story. The image however is so evocative, I sat with it awhile, reflecting on winter and the stone cold darkness, on the longing for warmth and nurture, on how nothing warms the stone child like the blazing fire of the heart…

The other phrase I kept hearing was “sonic hydration.” Which struck me as the other medicine the stone child sorely needs. Heart fire and heart hydration. And we all know the quickest route to these is chanting the Name…

I found a transcription of CPE’s telling of Warming the Stone Child online so was able to read it at class and will also post it here. It’s a beautiful version of this Inuit tale and as I said at class, who knows better how to thrive in the long dark cold of winter but people of the Artic.

Like all great wisdom tales, it transcends time and place and can be felt through myriad lenses of perception. For people on a yogic path, it has a lot to say about clinging to form, about surrender, about the awesome power of tears shed from the depths of suffering—about how everything we search for is within….

It reminds me of the Mirabai poem, The Heat of Midnight Tears which I also read at class. All this in the dharma talk audio clip below.

There was an orphan that was so lonely and so hungry that no one wanted to be near him. His mouth was open all the time and his teeth were always showing and tears were always running down from his eyes, and he was so wild with hunger that they had to tie him in the entrance to one of the skin houses so he’d not try to eat the hunters on their way to the seal hunt; that’s how hungry he was.

They would, on occasion, leave him some rancid reindeer meat or maybe some spoiled intestines to eat, but, as we know, it was more than hunger that was gnawing at him. Those deep needs that not even the person themselves understands. So everyday he stretched his chain a little bit and a little bit more, until he could get near a stone that was more or less the same size as himself. You see, his mother and father had died one night, and their bodies had been dragged off by bears, and all that had been left behind by them was this one particular stone. So he wrapped both his arms and his legs around that rock and he wouldn’t let go of it. And, of course, his people thought he was crazier than ever, and on their way home from the hunt, with animal carcasses slung over their shoulders, they would jeer at him, and they would say, “Analuk has taken a stone for a wife, ha ha. It’s good for you to have a wife who is a stone, for then you cannot use your hunger and eat her.” And they went on their way.

But the boy was so lonely and so hungry that he really had reached the end of his feeling for life. And even though he had that terrible loneliness and that gnawing hunger, he kept his body wrapped around that stone, and because the stone began to take the heat from his flesh, the boy began to die. The stone took the heat from his hands, and then it took the heat from his thighs, and it even took the heat from his chin where he rested it on top of the stone.

And just as the boy was living his last breath, the hunters of his village came by again on their way home from the hunt, and again they called him down, and they said, “You crazy boy! You are nesting with that stone like it is an egg. We should call you Bird Boy, you good-for-nothing creature.” And because the boy was near death, his feelings were hurt more than he could ever say, and great icy tears began to roll down his face and across his parka, and his cold, cold tears hit the hot, hot stone with a sizzle and a hiss and a crack, and it broke the stone right in two.

And inside was the most perfect little female the boy could ever want. “Come,” she said, “I am here now, and you are an orphan no more.” And she gave him a bow and arrows and a harpoon she had brought with her, and the boy and the girl made their house and had babies. And, if they are not yet dead, they are in that land where the snow is violet and the night sky is black. They are there, living still.

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water, I would have asked to be born a fish in this life. If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts, Then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came from the womb! If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves, Then the goats would surely go to the Holy One before us!

If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way, I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.

Mirabai says: The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God.

One point I did not get to in this week’s dharma talk is the perfect ending of the Stone Child story: ” They are there, living still…” Living still. Such a beautiful evocation of the eternal stillness of the present moment. Reminds me of the opening sutras of Patanjali:

1.1 Atha yogānushāsanam

1.2 Yogah chitta vritti nirodhaha

1.3 Tadā drashtu svarupe avasthānam

Now, in this moment, the study of Yoga, which is the stilling of the thought waves of the mind; and in that stillness we rest in our essential nature.

I’ve walked this path now for nearly forty years and for me, chanting Om Namah Shivaya feels as fresh and alive as that very first time…Every repetition bathing me in sonic hydration, warming me from the inside, breaking open the stone child barriers in heart and mind so I merge, over and over, with the tender magnificence of the Self.

Here in central NJ I’m watching the snow come down. Looks like we have a good ten inches or more. Startling to gaze at this east coast winter wonderland and realize it’s sunny and warm on the west coast and there’s a heat wave in Australia. To those readers in places with more serious blizzard conditions than we’re having here, I wish you warmth, safety, and the good fortune to be able to stay indoors until you choose to venture out…. To those facing the opposite weather extremes, I wish you cooling breezes and gentle rain. Weather extremes notwithstanding, I wish everyone a good beginning to 2014.

suzingreen.com It’s been an auspicious start for me. January 1, my new album and website both went live. These have been major projects and what a joy to see them launch. Please visit the website — http://www.suzingreen.com — we’re still fine tuning but the basics are there.

The Mantra Project, Vol. I: Daughter of the MountainPlease click the tab at the top of this blog for details about this new release. Of course we’d love you to buy copies and/or download tracks, but you can also listen for free through the wonders of Sound Cloud and Spotify. Please help us get this music out to the world. Reviews on iTunes and CD Baby along with shout-outs on FB and Twitter are most appreciated.

Finally, to regular [and new] visitors to this blog, let me say I’m keenly aware that posting has been erratic bordering on remiss. It’s been impossible to stay current here while working on the new album and writing content for the website. Plus, we started a major house-painting project in October so I’ve been living and working in a semi-construction zone since then. I do record class every week so there’s quite a lot of material to post here. I’m truly looking forward to things settling down and being able to get back to some semblance of regular blogging. For now, I thank you for your enduring patience and ongoing support of my work.

Welcome to the Monday Night Blog

November 28, 2015

I started teaching Monday Night Class at the Princeton Center for Yoga & Health in 1997. I'd been a student of Siddha Yoga since the 1977 and had recently moved on from that guru-centric tradition. Although the paradigm of guru yoga no longer worked for me, I still found tremendous beauty, power, and wisdom in the yogic path. So I immersed myself in a process of discernment, separating out what I now saw as dogma and magical thinking from what I perceived as essential truth. Monday Night Class was born from that inquiry.

In Monday Night Class' early years I clung to traditional texts and teachings. As I grew stronger in my process, I started taking more risks, allowing my inner vision to guide me. Class grew, year after year, developing, deepening, opening into its essential heart.

The Monday Night Blog began in 2010. We were working our way through Stephen Mitchell's translation of the "Tao Te Ching." Along with this text, I was bringing in sacred poetry, stories, and wisdom teachings from parallel traditions. It made sense to collect all this material in one place and the Monday Night Blog was born. Along the way, we started recording my dharma talks and class chanting, adding an audio dimension.

The demands of my life have forced me to cut way back on regular blogging. Hope springs eternal however, and I hope to return to more regular posting in the new year.

Thanks for visiting. We look forward to seeing you again and again.

Always,
SuzinG,

Monday Night Class Beloved Books in No Particular Order…

This is not an exhaustive list of all source texts I bring to class. Simply a gathering of ones I come back to again and again...

Robert Bly
The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems
of Kabir. The Seventies Press. 1977; Kabir: Ecstatic Poems. Beacon Press. 2004; The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures. Ecco Press. 1995

Thomas Byrom
The Heart of Awareness: A Translation of the Ashtavakra Gita. Shambhala Dragon Editions. 1990